Reality TV
Dictionary

With new reality television game shows constantly popping up on our screens they all begin to feel rather similar. The programme makers have the same problem and have to find new ways to seperate each creation from its peers.
Our Reality TV Dictionary will help you get to grips with the lingo that defines the formats in this highly derivative genre. Learn to know your castaways from your survivors with our fun and handy guide.

Academy
Fame Academy
Austere building furnished with garish accoutrements to evoke a feeling of learned, refined pop tutoring.

Banishment Beach
Castaway 2007
Castaways vote for members of the group to get in a boat and go live in a small cabin on an isolated nearby beach.

Banker
Deal Or No Deal
Stingy old bastard, watches with a
calculator and a heart of stone whilst making
nuisance calls to Noel Edmonds.

Bars
The Club
Barrell-bottom, dredging telly car crash sees Sam Fox lose the plot and drink away the profits of her nightclub section and whilst trying to claim sobriety. Blackwood and Gaffney look on in amazement.

Boot Camp
X-Factor / Grease Is The Word
Gruelling elongation of the auditions process particularly significant in Simon Cowell formats with an intensive period of training, selection and harassment.

Boutiques
WAGs Boutique
Lens friendly footballers’ wives and
girlfriends show exactly why they need a rich lover to get by, as they take on the daily struggle that comes from having to meet the tough expectations of working in a shop three days a week.

Bunker
Unanimous
Contestants live without sunlight or time
references until they agree who wins the cash or give up and walk out.

Bush Tucker Trials
I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here
Star grabbing rituals for public persecution invariably resulting in participants being scared shitless, getting gunked or eating willies.

Cadets
Space Cadets
Carefully selected imbeciles learn ridiculous falsities and train amongst fake Russian soldiers in preparation for a bogus trip into space on a simulator in a shed.

Camp
I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here!
Camera-ridden Australian bush clearing where celebrities reside in the company of various creepy crawlies just a short drive from a luxury hotel.

Candidates
The Apprentice
Self obsessed achievers perform demeaning exercises loosely connected to the world of business under the misapprehension that it’s a job interview and not a game show.

Castaways
Castaway 2007
Disparate members of public each try to ‘make the most of the experience’ while starving in a hut near New Zealand.

Cast Members
The Real World
Fame yearning yanks share accommodation and
pretend to continue their normal lives while
cameras follow them around.

Challenges
Survivor
Varying competitive exercises leading to rewards or immunity involving endurance, problem solving, teamwork, dexterity, and/or will power.

Chest
I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here
Two celebrities leave the camp daily, navigating the jungle to find a chest. Upon their return, a tricky question determines whether their prize is edible or insulting.

Competitors
The Games
Celebrity contestants compete in a variety of sports trying desperately not to hurt themselves in the process.

Diary Room
Big Brother
The chair is as famous as the show: where housemates have tears, tantrums and drunken chats with their favourite sizeable sibling.

Co-Pilot
Touch The Truck
Somebody very close to the truck-toucher gets even closer as they’re required to be on hand 24 hours a day with some motivational talk and a pot of Vaseline.

Elimination
Who Wants To Be A Superhero?
Spandex-clad posers wait on glowing podiums for the comic book creator’s decision on who did bad at do-gooding.

Eviction
Big Brother
Desperado housemates in the ultimate TV fishbowl hear that Davina is coming to get them after their nail-biting week of back-stabbing and public voting.

Exile Island
Survivor
A selected player is ‘exiled’ to a small island thereby strategically weakening them through the subsequent lack of food and water. Exiled players can however benefit by discovering the location of an Immunity Idol.

Expelled
Ladette To Lady
Common girls fail to change their ways and get kicked out of fancy ladies school for putting the pig into Pygmalion.

Expulsion
Fame Academy
Less talented or disliked singing scholar is given the chance to see family and friends again after an extraneous series of votes.

Fab Five
Queer Eye for the Straight Guy
Fashion conscious team of whooping homosexuals poised to coo over and make-over dull hetero men.

Fight
The Contender
Rare reality television elimination test where contestants punch each other to see who goes - a breath of fresh air that could be wonderfully inserted into numerous other formats.

Finishing School
Ladette To Lady
Foulmouthed, uncultured ladette chavs wear the kind of pearl necklace they’re least used to as they learn etiquette and deportment in a big posh house with a group of mean old bitches.

Fired
The Apprentice
Job applicants vying for the attention of a megalomaniac millionaire get chastised and ritualistically removed from the process week by week.

Green Mile
Popstars
Ex-dancer ‘Nasty’ Nigel Lythgoe puts his table a really long way away from the door in order to create greater tension when sending people home.

Hacienda
Playing It Straight
Mexican ‘El Rancho Macho’ where a lone female attempts to suss the suitors’ sexuality to win a cash prize by picking out a hetero hombre.

Heroes
Who Wants to Be a Superhero?
Costumed Americans show that they are bold, righteous and true as they compete to be immortalised by Stan Lee in comic book form.

House
Big Brother
Summer-time telly showroom for trendy companies’ latest household furniture and appliances.

Housemates
Big Brother
People who would never even consider living together are forced to grit their teeth and avoid arguments amidst a dizzying mix of aggravation and boredom.

Hut Cam
Shipwrecked
Beautiful sun-kissed islanders bitch and moan about similarly bitchy beautiful islanders.

Ice Panel
Dancing On Ice
Slightly camp selection of people too old or injured to be on the ice anymore bestow judgement upon Torvill and Dean’s skate students.

Investigators
Murder In Small Town X / The Murder Game
Budding sleuths interrogate actors and become pawns in pre-scripted drawn-out murder mystery story, periodically being scared witless in dark locations.

Jury
Survivor
Recently ejected contestants return to observe tribal councils during the final weeks to eventually decide the ultimate winner.

Killer’s Game
Murder In Small Town X / The Murder Game
Two investigators are sent out alone to separate locations after night-fall with body-mounted cameras, one finds a clue typically eliminating a suspect, the other meets their grizzly demise at the hands of the unknown murderer.

King/Queen Of The Jungle
I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here
Winner of the final public vote gains career boost and appearances on a multitude of daytime chat shows.

Lab
Shattered
Converted location for sleep deprivation game show purports to be a laboratory to enforce suggestions that a television
science experiment is taking place.

Lair
Who Wants To Be A Superhero?
Hi-tech, monitor-infested, curiously lit secret hub for lycra loving champions.

Lookout
Castaway 2007
Ramshackle, airy, room with a view - for airing views in.

Love Shack
(Celebrity) Love Island
Potential lovebirds are partnered off and sent for a night in a secluded part of the luxury resort in the desperate hope that they’ll cop off on camera and it’ll increase ratings. They don’t and it doesn’t.

Mole
The Mole
Saboteur lurks amongst suspicious contestants occasionally messing with missions but mostly leaving that to the others’ ineptitude.

Night School
Shattered
Sleepy contestants are visited after dark by experts extolling their knowledge of increasingly dull subjects with lectures on triangles, mime, paper folding and dinner etiquette.

Nominations
Big Brother
Housemates are told to state the names of two fellow housemates and explain the reasons for their choice. Exclusion from this process may be used as punishment for earlier misdemeanours.

Outcast
Unanimous
The least popular contestants must put on a special t-shirt when disclosed secrets are considered bad by the slightly more popular contestants.

Panel
Without Prejudice?
Five people who don’t know each other sit around a desk eliminating people they don’t know from another group of five to decide who should be given a wad of cash.

Poisoned Chalice
The Search
Dodgy cup passing game where clever bastards hand a goblet around a circle and the last one holding it after five passes has to bugger off home and stop getting free
holidays.

Quiz
The Mole
Questions are answered based on contestants’ suspicions of the saboteur’s identity. The lowest scoring
contestant is eliminated.

Resort
(Celebrity) Love Island
Sun drenched location in the South Pacific that programme executives have chosen in order to have a sly jolly at the advertisers’ expense. Pointless reality programme happens simultaneously.

Sacked
Deadline
Relatively heard of celebrities are asked to clear their desks by Janet Street-Porter after shitting on their own doorstep papping friends.

Secret Communicator
Who Wants To Be A Superhero?
Walkie talkie gizmo kept on utility belt or inside external pants for the
purposes of receiving instructions and warnings of
impending peril.

Skate Off
Dancing On Ice
Bottom two couples after the public vote are made to skate-off before one pair is told to piss off.

Sleep Off
Shattered
The remaining droopy-eyed contestants are put to bed and plunged into darkness after a week of sleep
deprivation, the last one to fall asleep wins the cash.

Students
Fame Academy
Housebound singing contest submits participants to long heavily scheduled days of tutelage within a sophisticated and expensive looking location.

Treemail
Survivor
Messages stuck to trees by the production team instructing participants of what awaits them.

Tribal Council
Survivor
Underperforming tribes are forced to hold flame lit nomination scribblings on pretend parchment before the least popular member of the group has to carry their torch off into the undergrowth.

Walk of Shame
The Weakest Link
Tetchy red-head talks too quickly as she spits her farewell statement at the contestant with the most votes.

Weigh-In
Celebrity Fit Club
Well known fatsos get on the scales to see if they’ve stopped being quite such a fatso in the previous week.

Workforce
Judgemental
Quiz contestants look upon each other with scorn and derision assessing each others ability to answer general knowledge questions.

You Snooze You Lose
Shattered
Comfy and tiresome hour-long trials forced upon sleep deprived contestants who must stay awake or suffer a drop in the potential prize fund.

Check out more reality TV content:

Big Brother - interviews and analysis

Wags Boutique - tongues WAG at the boutique